Trump sues Iowa newspaper over election poll claiming Harris’s lead | Donald Trump

Donald Trump has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the Des Moines Register newspaper and its pollster, J Ann Selzer, accusing them of consumer fraud and “election interference” over a poll from before the election that showed Kamala Harris leading Trump in Iowa.

The lawsuit was filed in Polk county late Monday, as reported by Reuters and NBC News, which have reviewed the documents.

The lawsuit reportedly seeks “accountability for brazen election interference” they allege was committed by the newspaper and Selzer over its 2 November poll, that showed Harris ahead of Trump by three percentage points in Iowa.

Trump ultimately won the state by around 13 percentage points and also beat Harris in the election to become America’s president-elect.

The lawsuit reportedly states that “Selzer’s polling ‘miss’ was not an astonishing coincidence – it was intentional” and that “as President Trump observed: ‘She knew exactly what she was doing’”.

According to Reuters, the lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order barring the Des Moines Register from engaging in “ongoing deceptive and misleading acts and practices” related to polling.

Gannett, the parent company of the newspaper, is also reportedly named in the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Gannett told Reuters that the organization stands by its reporting and believes the lawsuit is without merit.

In mid-November, Selzer announced her retirement from polling in political contests, stating she is moving on to “other ventures and opportunities”.

The lawsuit in Iowa was seemingly filed just hours after Trump said that he would “probably be filing a major lawsuit” against the newspaper and Selzer during a press conference on Monday.

“I’m doing this because I feel I have an obligation to,” Trump said on Monday. “I’m going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time, and then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points and it became the biggest story all over the world.

“In my opinion, it was fraud and it was election interference,” Trump continued. “She’s gotten me right always, she’s a very good pollster she knows what she was doing.

“It costs a lot of money to do it, but we have to straighten out the press,” he added. “Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections.”

The suit is the latest in a slew of legal actions Trump has taken against the media. In the press conference Trump also mentioned his lawsuit against the publisher Simon & Schuster and the journalist Bob Woodward, who he alleged “didn’t quote me properly from the tapes” and “sold the tapes, which he wasn’t allowed to do”.

Both Simon & Schuster and Woodward have described the lawsuit as meritless.

At the press conference, Trump also discussed a lawsuit he filed against CBS News in October, accusing the network of “deceitful” editing in a 60 Minutes interview with Harris.

CBS News has said that the claims in the lawsuit are “completely without merit” and has filed a motion to dismiss the suit.

This all comes as last week, ABC News, which is owned by Walt Disney, agreed to pay $15m to a foundation and museum to be established by Trump as part of a settlement in yet another defamation lawsuit that the president-elect had launched.